Oculus/Facebook is quickly becoming the EA/Ubisoft of VR with many people despising their bully tactic to buyout as many VR developers as they can. With as small as the VR community is with the expensive equipment requirements, its a very bad idea to block out the VR majority which is currently the Vive. I applaud the Serious Sam devs for refusing the bride and not selling out the VR community.

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VR exclusivity deals are one of the most controversial topics in the industry right now, and it looks like the developer of Serious Sam VR just fuelled the fire significantly.

Mario Kotlar, a Level and Game Designer at Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope developer Croteam, recently revealed that Oculus VR offered the team a “****ton of money” to make its latest creation exclusive to the Oculus Rift, blocking out support for the HTC Vive. The topic started up in a debate about the news that Giant Cop, a VR game first announced for the HTC Vive, will now be a timed exclusive for Rift, causing outcry from the VR community.

“It wasn’t easy, but we turned down a ****ton of money, as we believe that truly good games will sell by themselves and make profit in the long run regardless,” Kotlar claims. “And also because we hate exclusives as much as you do.” He wouldn’t confirm the final sum of money that was offered to the developer.

Before we go any further let’s clarify; Kotlar went to great lengths to seemingly verify his identity, posting a picture of his business card complete with an E3 pass, with a Serious Sam poster in the background. We haven’t been able to completely confirm his position ourselves, though, so take these claims with a pinch of salt right now.

Exclusivity deals such as this are proving highly unpopular in the vocal VR community, especially in the case of PC-based VR. Oculus has been working with a wide range of developers under an ‘Oculus Studios’ banner to create full exclusives for the Rift, recent examples of which include The Climb from Crytek and Edge of Nowhere from Insomniac Games. Valve and HTC, however, are taking an exclusive-free stance with the HTC Vive, which has put Oculus under even more pressure. Fortunately, Serious Sam VR won’t be subject to this controversy.

Serious Sam VR was announced today and is instead being published by Devolver Digital. It’s a first-person shooter in which players are cast as the titular character, fighting off waves of alien enemies with dual-wielding weapons using position-tracked controllers. An Early Access version of the game will be releasing in Summer 2016 on both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.